Much has been written and said about 93-year-old William Deedes: that he was the inspiration for Evelyn Waugh's unlikely war reporter William Boot in Scoop; that he was the real-life Bill of Private Eye's Dear Bill letters, the magazine's take on the Thatcher administration, as relayed by Denis, the Prime Minister's husband, in irascible missives to a mystery golfing and drinking buddy.

This is a man of many parts. As a journalist, Deedes has worked as a humble hack, as editor of the Daily Telegraph and, latterly, as a columnist for that paper. Sandwiched between these stints in the Fourth Estate have been military service during the Second World War and a career in politics as a Conservative MP and cabinet minister. He is also the oldest guest to have appeared on Have I Got News For You. Truly, this is a life.

Yet despite the veneration in which he is held, he is remembered principally in journalism for his longevity and generally being a good cove. These are laudable achievements, but as editor of the Telegraph he was not a success. As a columnist, he is no iconoclast, no great wordsmith, no voice of our times.

Words and Deedes is a collection of his journalism from 1931 to the present day and allows us to assess whether there is more to be said here. In his favour is his ability to surprise the reader. Just when one fears that he may be heading for the same bilious terminus as other Telegraph 'greats' of the past and present - one thinks of TE Utley, Colin Welch and, more recently, Simon Heffer - he throws in an essay celebrating the Sixties, praising Peter Flannery's gritty 1996 TV series Our Friends in the North or dispassionately assessing the late Eighties phenomenon of acid house. There is a curiosity and optimism here that does not naturally fit with the we're-going-to-hell-in-a-handcart tone of many a Telegraph leader.

It is a reminder that Deedes cannot be so easily pigeonholed. He was a confidant of Denis Thatcher but never as extreme in his right-wing views. Although one instinctively places him in High Tory, patrician circles, his upbringing was not always so privileged. He should have gone to Oxford, but the Wall Street Crash left his family financially crippled (his father was forced to sell Saltwood Castle in Kent, later to become the home of Alan Clark MP), so the young Deedes embarked on a career in journalism.

Within a few years, he had met Waugh, with whom he covered Mussolini's dirty war in Abyssinia. Writing about this shameful episode almost 70 years later, Deedes was still indignant about the inertia of Britain, the duplicity of France and the pusillanimity of the soon-to-be-discredited League of Nations in the face of the rise of fascism during the Thirties.

It is not easy to find people alive today with clear memories of the abdication and the Queen's golden jubilee four years ago. Deedes reported on both. Unsurprisingly, he emerges here as a staunch defender of the House of Windsor but surely even the most hardened monarchist would be embarrassed by his thoughts on the Prince Andrew-Sarah Ferguson wedding of 1986 - 'a joyous event', 'this generation is richly endowed by their royals'. Within six years, the Yorks' marriage was reaching the same messy conclusion as that of the Waleses and of Princess Anne and Mark Phillips, and still no one was any closer to solving the problem of what to do with Edward.

This indulgence is extended to the late Princess of Wales, whom Deedes befriended in the last years of her life. Opinion on Diana has become so polarised that he will struggle to win over those who have not, like him, been seduced by the People's Princess image. His character assessment of Paul Burrell, however, whom he also knew, is more insightful than any of the tabloid columns published about this clearly troubled individual.

In the case of Denis Thatcher, once described by Malcolm Muggeridge as the type of man one finds oneself pissing next to at the Ritz (a compliment, one suspects, in Bill's eyes), Deedes paints an engaging portrait of a husband who often struggled with the loneliness of Number 10 while his wife was off putting the world to rights.

Perhaps the best tribute one can pay to Deedes is that he probably brought out the best in Denis. With dear Bill in tow, a round of golf with the old reactionary and a few stiff ones at the 19th hole could have been rather entertaining.